


To Be...

by Llama1412



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s01e02 Four Marks, Episode: s01e03 Betrayer Moon, F/M, YenWeek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-01
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23877295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llama1412/pseuds/Llama1412
Summary: Collection of shorts for Yennefer Appreciation Week on Tumblr!
Relationships: Istredd/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Tissaia de Vries & Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	1. To Be Seen: Day One: favourite moment(s) | courage

_“Remember that scared girl who tumbled at your feet in this cave totally unaware of her power? I want to never be her again.”_

Yennefer thought about the first moment she had arrived in Aretuza, portalling herself from the beating in the pigpen to a barren cave built by long-dead elves. She thought about it and she hated who she was at that time, hated that she had been so helpless that only an unknown power she possessed had saved her.

Yennefer refused to ever rely on the unknown. She had sworn she would learn this power and _use_ it to be seen – actually properly seen for the power she had, not for the twist in her spine or the warped curl of her smile.

The day of her ascension as a mage was supposed to be life changing. Her power would be officially recognized, her court assignment finalized, and her transformation would begin.

Instead, she discovered that Istredd had betrayed her and Tissaia had failed her. 

Yennefer refused to go to Nilfgaard. She refused to be brushed aside by some king who was only interested in pleasure of the flesh while his subjects starved. Yennefer was meant to be _powerful_ , not consigned to a life as the king’s side piece.

If Yennefer could not rely on anyone here to make that happen, she would just have to do it herself.

When it came down to it, she should have known the only one should could ever truly trust was herself, anyway. 


	2. To Be Loved: Day two: favourite relationship | heartbreak

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were few people worthy of being trusted with Yennefer's heart.

Yennefer guarded her heart carefully. Pain was an old companion, but she didn’t need to go seeking it out. There were very few people worthy of being trusted with her heart.

She had thought Istredd was one. He had been so sweet to her from the start, respecting her ferocity as much as her untamed power. Yennefer had thought she could love him, this man who introduced her to a whole new world – who shared stories of the people her father’s blood came from, who told her the truth and not humanity’s lies, who showed her beauty in this world because he thought she would like it.

She had thought Istredd was special, that he understood her.

Then he betrayed her. Yes, in fairness, she had been spying for Tissaia just as he had been for Stregobor, but nothing _she_ had shared had hurt him. Meanwhile, Istredd cost her _everything!_

And then he thought she would willingly submit to some fantasy where she was nothing but his companion, holding dust pans while Istredd excavated the wonders of the world?

Yennefer would rather die.

  
She refused to let her power be handed to her by another, dolled out in whatever dose he determined she’d _earned_. Yennefer was going to be the most powerful mage on the continent, and she would get there _herself,_ and she would destroy any who got in her way.


	3. To Be Magic: Day three: magic | ambition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer would learn magic and she would become powerful.

_“Magic is organizing chaos. And while oceans of mystery remain, we have deduced that this requires two things: balance and control. Without them, Chaos will kill you.”_

Magic was difficult. It frustrated Yennefer endlessly. She tried so hard, but it was not a skill like reading or mathematics, where practice was enough to make a difference. Yennefer practiced and practiced and still, she could not lift the damned stone.

At least daisies were a nice snack. And if they wouldn’t obligingly wither to balance the magic of lifting her stone, then at least Yennefer got to enjoy the flowers. But it was infuriating – for the first time, Yennefer had discovered that she had the potential to _be_ something more! Not just the bastard part-elf child, not just the girl with the twisted spine who slept with the pigs, but someone _powerful_ , someone who could utilize Chaos to get what she wanted.

If only she could get the damn stone to lift!

Yennefer refused to give up. This was the only path she had – she could amount to nothing in life, as her mother’s husband had always said she would, or she could be _magic_ and powerful and untouchable.

There had never been a question of which Yennefer would choose.


	4. To Be Beautiful: Day four: fashion | colour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Set during Episode 3, pre-transformation. Yennefer picks out the dress she wants to wear when she will be presented to the rules of the continent in.

Yennefer had never had access to nice clothes. Aretuza had a uniform, a basic blue dress, and her mother’s husband had never bought her anything – as a child, she had worn whatever castaways her mother’s other children had. Certainly nothing beautiful.

But now she was going to be a King’ Mage. She was going to go to Aedirn and be seen as the power she truly was! And apparently, she would also get to wear beautiful clothes.

It was oddly exciting, choosing a dress to wear. Perhaps it was silly to feel like she was doing something forbidden, but Yennefer had never had this chance before and she was going to enjoy it. So what if he couldn’t wear the dress until after her transformation? She still got to touch it and hold it and imagine what it would be like, to be beautiful.

Yennefer was sure this was everything she had been waiting for all her life. Court was supposed to be glamorous, with people wearing such fine garments all the time! Yennefer would finally be powerful and acknowledged, and she could be so while wearing the pretty things that she’d never had before.


	5. To Be Elven: Day five: tropes | free choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yennefer reflects on her heritage

Yennefer hated her human side. It may have been her elven blood that twisted her spine, but it was humans who scorned her for it, who beat her for it, who considered her worthless for it. 

Her mother’s husband sold her for less than the pig cost. That was the worth humans assigned to her.

Yennefer didn’t know much about elves, but she’d heard rumors, occasionally, that they accepted their half-blood children. Why couldn’t her half-elf father have been raised by them? Why couldn’t she have been given to them?

Would the elves have hated her for things she could not control, or would they acknowledge her worth as she was: Yennefer, a girl who wanted more from life than what she’d been given? Or would she simply have been caught in the Great Cleansing, as her father was?

Istredd was the first to tell her anything of her father’s people, her people. In the Tower of the Gull, he told her that the skulls and bones the place were built on came from elves – not as slaves, but as the original sorcerers of the continent. 

“When humans and monsters all arrived after the Conjunction of the Spheres, elven mages taught the first humans how to turn chaos into magic. And then...the humans slaughtered them, so they could pretend the power had always belonged to them.” Istredd said, and Yennefer wasn’t prepared for how deeply that would hit her.

She remembered what Tissaia had taught them on their first day.  _ Magic is organizing chaos. And while oceans of mystery remain,  _ **_we_ ** _ have deduced that this requires two things: balance and control. Without them, Chaos will kill you. _

Yennefer wondered whether humans had discovered anything about Chaos, or if the oceans of mystery remained because humans had killed their own teachers.

When all she had worked for was destroyed because the Brotherhood thought her elven blood tainted her, her hatred for her human blood solidified. They didn’t want her? Well fuck their rules then. Yennefer would claim all the power she had fought for, and if they got in her way, she would destroy them, just as they destroyed her father and his ancestors.


	6. Bonus Chapter: To Be Yennefer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I already finished YenWeek entries, but I started thinking of 5+1s, and idk, this needed a wrap up bringing it all together.

_ “Forget the bottle. Let your Chaos explode!” _

It was odd, Yennefer thought idly as she walked up the rock she had chosen for her last stand. It was odd that it had taken until this moment for her to truly be seen for the power she was.

Yennefer was not a nature sorceress like Triss, and she could not snap 50 enemy spines at once like Coral, but she was Yennefer of Vengerberg, and she had power of her own. She had worked long and hard for her power, and now, it was all that stood between the only family she had ever known and the army on her doorstep.

Yennefer stepped up the rock, gathering the energy from the fires burning around the fort in the tips of her fingers. She had power because of who she was, because of everything she’d ever been through.

Her past echoed in her head. The girl in her village:  _ Where are you going, poppy girl? We can teach you.  _ Her mother’s husband:  _ She’s no daughter of mine.  _ Glacella, the student:  _ Just because you fucked up doesn’t mean we will.  _ Queen Kalis:  _ You horrible useless bitch!  _ Artorius of the Brotherhood:  _ If only Yennefer had gone to Nilfgaard. I’m sorry you chose power.  _ Even Tissaia:  _ Do you actually have what it takes? _

Yennefer’s world was pain. It always had been, and it was only fitting if that was the way she went out. But she would use that pain, she would harness it just as she had taken everything else life had thrown at her, and she would  _ use  _ it.

She was Yennefer of Vengerberg, and she would teach the continent to fear her power.


End file.
